When he returned to New York City in 1875, Saint-Gaudens took a studio in the German Savings Bank Building and met the architects Stanford White, Charles Follen McKim, and Henry Hobson Richardson, as well as the painter John LaFarge. They involved him in a group of complex decorative projects. Saint-Gaudens also began to make the bronze reliefs that would become the mainstay of his work, attracting clients steadily for the rest of his life.